15

The concurrent processes of globalization and European integration have raised the profile of a previously marginalized type of urban area: the cross-border metropolitan region. Within these emerging metropolitan territories, the cross-border governance issue is a crucial factor for organizing and managing the territory but also for understanding the driving forces for and obstacles to territorial integration in Europe. The idea of this paper is to contribute to this debate by analyzing the functioning of cross-border governance in the field of public transportation within one of the most institutionalized cross-border regions in Europe: the Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai Eurometropolis. After introducing the political and geographic context that led to the creation of the Eurometropolis, an innovative method in a cross-border framework, based on social network analysis, is used to study the role of the various actors involved. The objective is to evaluate the relationships of the various organizations involved in cross-border cooperation and to discover the key actors in the governance of the public transport sector.